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1923 aka Heaven is one of two animation loops directed by Max Hattler, inspired by the work of French outsider artist Augustin Lesage (1876-1954). 1923 is based on Lesage’s painting A Symbolic Composition of the Spiritual World from 1923. This captivating video at times visually reminiscent of mandalas takes us into the inner world of an unknown colossus.

A symmetrical matrix of generative synthetic growth iterations of varying frequency intensities. In both image and sound, the author uses an effect reminiscent of analogue television static noise grain combined with the motif of blurriness. Sharp breaks that disrupt the continuous audio-visual stream and divide it into chapters with the same name: “+”, only strengthen the feeling that something is wrong with the video.

In Aanaatt, one of the highlights of his filmography, the author presents an ever-changing vision of “analogue futurism” created completely without digital effects. His original world is characterised by a constant movement of various objects that may or may not be of this world. Deviated points of view and reflection of the reality behind the window plunge the viewers into uncertainty.

Responding to the compositional and aesthetic qualities of abstract expressionism and camera-free animation, All Rot uses photographic reanimation to render the mundane environment of a decaying crazy golf course into a rapturous split-screen experiment in synesthetic cinema.

One of the older films of Hattler‘s retrospective was made during his studies at the Royal College of Art. In it, he disassembles the symbols of the Islamic world and the stars and stripes from the American flag. In the spirit of non-figurative Islamic art, he works only with shapes and colours. Accompanied by a meaning-laden score, the film very clearly evokes a destructive conflict.

Repetition and distortion drive this audio-visual collaboration between composer Lux Prima and visual artist Max Hattler, where fuzzy analogue music and geometric digital animation collide in an electronic feedback loop, and spawn arrays of divisional articulations in time and space.

Motion creation, energy transmission, kinetic combustion. Audiovisual collaboration between composer Lux Prima, director Max Hattler, and a group of animators from the School of Creative Media at City University of Hong Kong. The result is a short but intensive experience combining the visuality of early abstract films with the atmosphere of sci-fi blockbusters.

In the second of Hattler’s student films screened at Anifilm, the author works with the real world. Analogue games with longer exposition of night lights create a spectacular visual supplement to an electro-jazz song of the same name. Together with the protagonists flashing past, we, as if by nature, find ourselves somewhere in the city during the night.

Serial Parallels approaches Hong Kong’s built environment from the conceptual perspective of celluloid film, by applying the technique of film animation to the photographic image. The city’s signature architecture of horizon-eclipsing housing estates is reimagined as parallel rows of film strips. It is one of the first screenings of Hattler’s latest film.

Max Hattler tries to visualise higher dimensions and unearthliness based on a turbulent atmosphere caused by a premonition of the end of the world. He uses elements of a complex and endlessly functioning mechanism. The cosmos of its pieces still performs many functions without emotions and retrospect. Partial changes are almost imperceptible.

What might appear as fun in training turns into a bloody ballet on the battlefield. This animation short-cut depicts the “attractiveness” of war using plastic toy soldiers. Their dance is alluringly mesmerising at first, yet weapons and dance do not go together and it is only a question of time before the first shot is fired. When conflict becomes a spectacle, the lines between destruction and entertainment get blurred…

“The film is based on the idea that there is an underlying unchanging synchronisation at the centre of everything; a sync that was decided at the very beginning of time. Everything follows from it, everything is ruled by it: all time, all physics, all life. And all animation,” Max Hattler explains. This film will drag you into a vortex of rhythmically unfolding infinite synchronisation.

The unknown X becomes a whole symphony of shapes. In a kinetic energetic otherworld where everything is by itself yet can intersect with each other, cross-action seems the best way to solve an unknown equation. Documentation of a water screen projection presented on Regent’s Canal in London.

After 1923 aka Heaven, this is Hattler’s second video inspired by the works of Augustin Lesage. Both films were created during five days in February 2010 with students at the Animation Workshop in Viborg, Denmark. And in this case as well, the film is a flight through a colossus of sorts, but this time, the surroundings are more depressive and almost hellish.